Dirty Blonde Princess
by PreciousPandalily
Summary: She's irreplaceable.


It was a very bright, lazy, empty Saturday afternoon in the last throws of summer. A cloud swam across the blue sky, and I tried to give shape to it. For a moment I imagined that I saw something like some kind of lizard, but the form faded in my mind and I realized it had been my imagination. I craned my head backward, looking across the rest area. A couple swings, a small sandbox, slides, and the neighborhood surrounding me.

She was coming. I thought to myself. She is definitely coming. And yet, something deep inside me, a snarling, bestial force told me that she wasn't coming. Though and the fear continued to chew inside my gut, my hands clasping tighter around me knees as I waited. Waited. Waited. And began to feel she really wasn't coming.

Then, she came.

I saw her walking from around the corner, snacking on a bag of chips with one of her hands and holding her pear pod with her other. She was nodding her head to the beat of her music so I figured she didn't see me waiting for her yet. Then she looked up at me. I smiled at with a casual wave. She quickly wrapped her headphones around her pear pod while she made her way across the street, returning a smile to me. To imagine Sam actually smiling at me is almost impossible, but it happened and I knew in this case it was a good thing. She wore a red long sleeve shirt with brown, dark yellow, and white stripes gliding on the front. She had on capri jeans and regular sneakers. I pursed my lips and closed my eyes again, muttering something that might have been close to a prayer.

When I turned my head, opened my eyes and saw that she was here alright. Alone and without Carly. I guess she felt that she didn't need to come. She is here, stepping on the sidewalk and onto the grass with her long, curly, dirty blonde hair let lose and curly behind her, the deep, azul color of her eyes captivating even at a distance. She smiled a perfect, white smile and waved as she walked.

She was beautiful. Of that, and perhaps that alone I was absolutely positive.

"Hey," I said, and I couldn't help but smile. She had that effect on me. Had had it, in fact for years, since I first saw her–her deep, enthralling, hypnotizing eyes that I never got enough of looking into since I met her from Carly.

She sat on the swing beside me, took a small, whimsical breath and paused a moment.

"Am I late?" She asked after a moment.

"No," I said. She wasn't. I was early by twenty minutes or so, I didn't tell her that.

"How long have you been here?"

"Not long." I said, and cracked my knuckles. As I did, I watched my knuckles intently, and pretend that each snapping were my knuckles breaking.

I saw her eyes flick skyward from the corner of mine. I allowed my eyes to slip skyward, a few clouds sailed by across the deep blue summer sky. I tried to find the cloud she was watching, I scoured the shapeless forms of gas, the puffy wisps of white miles and miles away. Something held her attention, something in the sky attracted her blue eyes– and I wanted to see it. To catch a glimpse at the shape which might appear formless to me, or might have looked like something completely different than what her eyes saw. I couldn't settle upon what she saw, I stopped looking.

"Does that cloud look like a flying pig?" She asked randomly.

I turned my head and looked at her differently. Her mouth was open just a little and she was still pointing the sky with a slight smile. I again tried to spot at whatever she was looking at but didn't find anything that looked liked animal. I saw her look at me from the corners of my eyes, but I still had my attention on the clouds.

"Doesn't it?" She asked again.

I laughed quietly to myself. I couldn't see it because she was probably using her imagination just how I thought I saw a lizard in the sky. "If anything, it doesn't look like a flying pig."

Then there was sure silence for a minute, but it seemed more like hours.

"Well, today's the day." She said as if it meant nothing to her. I felt that she was hiding how she truly felt. I felt a pang, a sort of mild pain shoot through my spine. 'Yes,' I thought to myself, 'Today is.'

"We'll stay in touch though." I said.

"Yeah," she responded, and repeated, as if trying to convince herself 'we'll stay in touch.'

And the voice within me told me that we wouldn't stay in touch. We would drift away. We could separate, and then I would be alone. There wouldn't be a show anymore and I would he stuck with Carly. Not that anything was wrong with her, but I was used to being around Sam as well. Now to think of it, I enjoyed her presence a bit more.

I wanted to believe what she said. I wanted, desperately for the words that escaped my mouth to have been meaningful. I wanted to stay in touch.

"Still though. There's a lot of people I won't ever see again, you know?" she said. And I said nothing, I sat, watching the trees sway in the invisible breeze that tickled my face. "People I never really got to know, people I didn't know very well. Faces, you know? Faces you see walking down the hallway, and you nod, you say hello, but don't really know their names. But out of all of them I have to be the one who has to move."

"Who needs 'em?" I said, and laughed. She smiled a little, too.

"And even–" she said, searching for the words. "Even–" she still could not find them. "Well, take you. Even if we stay in touch and call and visit once in a while–"

"Visit a lot!" I said. "I mean if it's possible Carly and I can visit all the time. I love the city."

"–we'll still be so far away…and do you even know anything about Chicago anyways?"

I shrugged my shoulders and a pause swept over both of us in the form of the distant, cool wind that seemed to blow from the future itself. It licked at us, it tickled us.

"Two thousand miles isn't far." I said sarcastically, then snickered. "It's not as far as it seems, I mean. A couple trains, a bus. It'll be fine." A pause. "Tell you what, we can meet halfway. Smack-dab in the middle."

"I'd like that," she said and smiled. "Where would that be anyways, Minnesota?"

We both had a small laugh for a second, then silence again.

We sat there, for a while neither of us was speaking. Both, I am sure, absorbed in some deep, metaphysical thought. She was probably probing the depths of her psyche, asking herself questions about life and her goals and what she would do once she moved in with her dad. How change would affect her and how she would be without us. She would have been thinking about the faces in the halls, the endless stream of humanity that flickered past her each day, the memories we all shared on the show, and the times we spent just us two together for a few minutes or more. This hurt, putting me in more pain than the time we tried to stop Carly from moving and leaving.

I felt that my thoughts were selfish. I thought only of her. About her eyes, the rare, brilliant, intolerable cuteness of them. Adorable, I supposed was the word I would have used, but it didn't fit. It wasn't fully mature enough. It didn't–couldn't evoke how I felt when I saw them, even at a distance. I felt like I had just been thrown off a ledge, and the air had been instantly sucked from my lungs. I thought of her hair, and how it always looked as if it was exactly the way it ought to be, even when tied carelessly behind her or flung halfheartedly over one shoulder. I thought of her skin, flawless in complexion. I thought of the delicate, soft curve of her lips, and thought what they might be like pressed against mine once again.

"Make sure you tell me all about Chicago." I said, rather feebly, my eyes flowing easily from the sky to her face. It was everything I had been thinking, and more. Quickly, I looked away, as if I had just caught a small glimpse of the sun. For a moment, I saw spots before my eyes where her face had been. A silly thing to imagine, I know.

"I will."

"Okay, good."

"Tell me about yours?"

"Definitely."

"I'm sure it'll be great."

"Yeah. Me too."

"Great."

"Definitely great."

We sat, a while and talked little. I didn't mind at all, but I grew worried she was dreadfully bored since we weren't with Carly. I always worried about that, and felt no relief as I saw her smiles with each furtive glance I shot her way. Smiles– even though she was bored. Must be something about her nature, I thought but then this is Sam I am talking about. So I figured she was maybe enjoying hanging out with me so far. I can't remember the last time when it was actually only us two together for more than five or ten minutes without Carly.

Soon she would be in a plane to Chicago and in a new home soon. She would be gone in a few hours, presumably at night. Next week summer would officially emd and I would be confused about what I wanted to do as I was now. Our time was short, it was exhausting.

I was out of time.

I was out of time.

I was out of time.

I just had enough time.

"Have you ever thought..." I asked her quietly, suddenly and quite unexpectedly snapping the neck of the beast about my neck. "About us, do you think we could have ever been more than, you know what I mean?" I didn't bother looking away from her as her eyes flicked toward me, even though she was bright like the sun in my vision. I didn't look away.

God, she was beautiful.

She looked at the clouds once more, then back at me while moving her swing closer to mine. "You know what Fredward, if you weren't such a total nerd I think we could."

I hated it when people call me by my first name, but since today is her last day I'll just let it go. I smiled and we both shot up from our swings. She pulled her phone from her pocket and I leaned over to see who it was.

"Carly." Sam said.

"Figures."

"She's in the car coming to pick me up from here and taking me back help move my bags. You could come but..."

"I have to meet my mom at the store. Yea." I said and watched her look at the ground for a second."

She glanced back at me with a smile and stuck her arms out just barely. "So I guess this is goodbye?" She mumbled.

I pulled her closer to me and I began to hug her. I can't remember the last time we actually hugged. All I know is that this was our last time for at least I knew of. We let go a couple seconds later and felt the breeze blow a little harder. The sun was beginning to set and I knew it was almost time. She placed her hand around my shirt and fixed the blue part of my collar. I watched her while she smiled and looked into my eyes.

"As much I hate you, I'm going to miss you a lot." She said jokingly.

I grinned, slowly moving my head towards Sam. She didn't seem to hesitate and moved a little closer. Our eyes closed and that moment our lips met. I felt her soft lips pressed against mine while I placed my hands around her waist. Her hands continued to relax around my neckand everything seemed to disappear around us. There was no sound; I couldn't even feel the cold air that was blowing on us anymore. I just knew it was me and her for that moment and nothing else mattered. We released slowly and I she looked at me funny.

"Wow." I said.

"Yea…wo-."

"What?" I asked after it seemed like she had lost her words.

"Nothing. I mean this was just…"

"Odd?"

"No not odd, just…"

"Different?"

"Yea." She answered. "And this isnt' really like me, I mean it was different from the last time we kissed."

I remembered that night. I was on my balcony and she came over to apologize after embarrassing. Then we agreed to share our first kiss. I compared the two and I realized I felt something more in this one. It wasn't as awkward and felt much more of a spark. I didn't know exactly how she felt about it, but I knew she was ok with it since she didn't back down. All that all didn't matter now. She was leaving any minute now to go back home and I had to leave before my mom would call and get impatient.

"Yea it is different."

If only I could kiss her once more.

Her hands fell from my collar and slid down my arms before she brought one of them back to herself. I held on to her right hand, watching her glance at them and smile.

"So this is it."

Her smile vanished.

"Yea. I guess it is."

We pulled each other into another hug once more and this time it was longer. I hated this, but at the same time I wanted to enjoy every last second of it. I'm going to miss her too, all of the times she's made fun of me, injured me, hurt me, just every minute she had spent making my life miserable and at the same time fun and enjoyable. Then I heard a beep from a car behind us. We quickly let go and Sam didn't seem as startled as I was. Spencer parked next to the sidewalk and out came Carly and she pointed to her phone. I saw Spencer doing some dance in the front seat to the music and Sam pulled out her phone and walked over to Carly.

"I just got your text." She said.

"Well you didn't tell me Freddie was here." Carly responded and smiled at me. "What were you two doing here?"

"Nothing. We just happened to see each other here at the same time." Sam answered.

"And I was just leaving." I said.

"What a coincidence." I mumbled and felt Sam elbow my stomach.

"Well we better get going. You don't want to miss your flight." Carly said, taking a few steps closer to the car. "Did you two already say bye yet?"

"Yea." I answered quickly.

"Aww…"

"What is it Carly?" Sam asked.

She sniffed, "This might be the last time us three are actually with each other. We all have to hug!"

Before I knew it, Carly grabbed my shirt and pulled all of us into one big squeeze. I felt like I was being surrounded by a boa constrictor and felt all my breath being taken out of me. We finally let go after ten seconds of pain and Carly walked towards the car saying bye to me. Sam turned around once more and bit her lip.

"Bye." She said and punched my arm softly.

I couldn't do anything now. I just placed my hands in my pockets and looked at her without an expression. "Bye Sam."

She leaned over to me, softly kissing my cheek. I smiled and watched her walk backwards for a second, looking at me and smiling one last time before turning around and getting into her car. I waited until she put her seat belt on and the two of them smiled, waving goodbye. My attention was mostly on Sam though. They drove off slowly and I stepped on the middle of the street, watching the car getting ready to make a left turn. I waited and waited until I couldn't see the car anymore. That was it. I walked back to the park and sat on the same swing I was sitting on earlier. This time I felt different because there was nobody on the swing next to me anymore.

That's what that was...

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**_I know two people had already favored this and there might have been two reviews, but the reason I re-posted this was because I had some complaints saying this wouldn't work. So i thought maybe it was my account messing up since it has been doing that nowadyas. So anyways, I hope you like it._**

**_Seddie FTW!_**

**_:)_**


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